ESPN's Bill Simmons made an odd remark about the Martin Luther
King Jr. assassination and Memphis sports on his
podcast yesterday.

Simmons was in Memphis last week for the Western Conference
Finals. While he was there, he walked past the Lorraine Motel
where MLK was killed in 1968.

He said that the assassination still affects the collective
psyche of the city, and causes Grizzlies fans to be overly tense.

Here's the full quote:

"I didn't know that much about Memphis, but I didn't realize the
effect that [the MLK] shooting had on that city. ... The shooting
kind of set the tone for how the city thinks about stuff. Like
even — we were at Game 3 right — great crowd. They fall behind
and the whole crowd got tense. It was like, 'Oh no, something bad
is going to happen.' And I think it starts from that shooting and
it's just that mindset they have."

The Grizzlies were down 2-0 in the series heading into Game 3. So
maybe Grizz fans were tense because they were on the verge of
going down 3-0 to a vastly superior team?

There's nothing really offensive here. But it certainly sounds
silly to claim that there's a causal relationship between a
45-year-old murder and the relative energy level of an NBA crowd
at a specific game.